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I started this website in 1996 – the wild frontier days of the web. Since then I’ve tamed it into a collection of writing (and photos) about the world out there and in here. More...

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Postcards

1. A postcard

Late last year I signed up for Heather Champ‘s postcard project, where she decided to mail out one postcard per day for the whole of 2013. I’m #297, a picture of some mylar balloons floating over a pleasant American street. So I took a photo of the postcard in a pleasant street in my town.

I was inspired by this, thinking that I should do an epic, long-term project. But then I realised I already have one.

2. In the house

The 2013 Australian series of Big Brother has recently ended. The series ran for 101 days, and in that time the housemates had no news from the outside world. During the final episode, the two remaining housemates were shown a video with a summary of the important news events that had taken place while they were in the house.

Tony Abbott was elected the new Australian Prime Minister

New South Wales was ravaged by bushfires

The United States federal government shut down for 16 days

Miley Cyrus twerked at the MTV Video Music Awards

Miley Cyrus called off her engagement with Australian actor Liam Hemsworth

Hawthorne won the AFL grand final

Sydney Roosters won the NRL grand final

One of the housemate’s boyfriends was in the winning racing team of the Gold Coast 600

Lou Reed died

Kim and Kanye got engaged

Miranda and Orlando split

Royal baby George was born

Mirada and Orlando’s split got the biggest reaction.

3. A reverse Warholian expedition

I’ve been having a play with Lady Gaga’s Artpop app, a promo device for her new album. The app store description promises a “reverse Warholian expedition”. That sounds intriguing and amazing, but all it means is if Andy Warhol put pop into art to create popart, then Gaga is putting art into pop to create artpop.

So what does the app offer? Well, after a complicated introduction in which the user answers a bunch of marketing questions, an “aura” (glowing fuzzy ball thing) is created by the Gaga-voiced guide. With my newly formed aura, I explored the app and discovered it was mainly a tool for creating works of artpop. What were these works of art pop? Animated gifs.

Yes, check out the rotating floral print camera. I artpopped it myself.

There’s also section where you can listen to the Artpop album (and buy it, of course), but that didn’t seem to work for me, possibly due to geographic restrictions. But really, if Artpop had a single as glorious as “Bad Romance”, I’d be out listening to the album and not mucking around making lame animated gifs.